"I only lied about being a thief" (James Bond - On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Ultimate Edition, 2 DVDs))

Member Name: george_lazenby

Product:	James Bond - On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Ultimate Edition, 2 DVDs)
Date:	24/02/02 (373 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very stylish, very well made, very funny

Disadvantages: Empty-headed

From the moment it starts, you should have no illusion about 'Ocean's Eleven' - it's a fun movie, nothing more. Steven Soderbergh's unlikely renaissance with 'Out of Sight' came after his film 'Schizopolis', a film which is as close as possible to a resignation letter from mainstream film-making as it is possible to come. Since then he has alternated between commercial and experimental: 'Out of Sight' was followed by the kaleidiscopic 'The Limey', the crowd-pleasing 'Erin Brokovich' was succeeded by the more difficult 'Traffic', and the next one will be a micro-budget satire called 'Full Frontal'. This film is deliberately positioned as a big audience picture, and it never strays far from that.

The purpose of the movie seems to be to become the kind of movie that the original 1961 film, starring all five members of the Rat Pack (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop), aspired to be, is generally remembered as being, but isn't. The original is leaden, slow-moving, and smug. Soderbergh's film would like to be, and generally is, funny, stylish and fast-moving; it's a tribute to the collective skill and good judgement at work here that even the music (courtesy of David Holmes, who also scored 'Out of Sight') is better.

The plot is fairly straightforward: George Clooney is Danny Ocean, a con-man who is released from prison and immediately decides to rip-off Terry Benedict, a Las Vegas casino owner (Andy Garcia) who has unimaginable fortunes in his vault, and just happens to be dating Ocean's ex-wife Tess (Julia Roberts). Assembling a team of criminal experts who include Ocean's old mate Dusty Ryan (Brad Pitt), one of Benedict's rivals (Elliot Gould), a elderly scam artist (Carl Reiner), and an expert thief (Matt Damon), the team go to work.

First things first - this is not a masterpiece. It's desperat
ely glib and cynical, bearing as little relation to the real world as Cinderella. This is a world where Benedict deserves to be taken for everything he's worth because he's not cool, and Ocean is. This is a world where dialogue is spoken because it sounds clever, not because it has any real meaning or purpose. Here's what I mean.

Clooney: "Does he make you laugh?"
Roberts: "He doesn't make me cry."

or

Roberts: "You're a liar and a thief"
Clooney: "I only lied about being a thief"

From their exchanges, Danny comes across as a snake, but that's not important; what is important is that Clooney looks fabulous, and snaps out his glittery lines with great skill. None of the characters has any depth, and the tug of love over Tess is won with staggering ease - from the first moment you see Garcia and Clooney on screen together, you know exactly who Tess will end up with.

Compared to the seamless blend of hard realism and cinematic expressionism in Soderbergh's previous movies, this is fantasy. As a heist movie, it fails, largely because the scam is accomplished with far too few hitches - you're simply invited to admire how clever it is as each new wrinkle and trick is revealed.

But you couldn't give a monkey's chuff about any of this: Is It Any Good, Mr Lazenby?

Well, yes. I doubt you'll see a more purely pleasurable film all year. Provided that you know that Soderbergh and Co. are simply attempting to make the most dazzling, polished entertainment of the year, you're in for a fine night out. This is beautiful people being beautiful, being stylish and witty in marvellous clothes, spitting one-liners out at each other and generally enjoying being in each others' exhalted company. Because none of the stars has brought an ego along, you get frequent jarring shots of Hollywood's most famous stars jumping around
on the screen together (in a Tom Cruise film, you are guaranteed that most of Tom's shots will be close-ups, and he won't allow other actors in the frame with him).

The robbery sequence (the only good bit in the original) is dazzling - the joy of a normal heist movie is, as I said, the succession of disasters which plague the conspirators as their well-made plan collapses. Here, whenever it seems that things are going pear-shaped, another incredibly clever and well-planned device appears to smooth things along.

The performances are universally likeable; though Don Cheadle's cockernee bomb-expert seems to have wandered in from the 'From Hell' accent school, the rest are superb. Particularly worthy of note are Clooney, who can do this kind of thing in his sleep, Reiner and Gould, the elder statesmen lapping up the attention, and Brad Pitt, who is to my mind one of the great character actors of his generation, hanging around in the background the whole time, and managing to steal the film from under everyone's nose. Julia is lovely, but isn't she always?

This is empty-headed but dazzling, pointless but hopelessly diverting, glossy but rivetting - it deserves no Oscars, no lasting reputation, but join the queue and enjoy it. A slick night out at the movies is rarely put together with such skill, so you might as well take advantage of it.

Summary: